Found Sound 2006

Each year, at the height of the post-holiday comedown, Pitchfork issues a new installment of Found Sound. A more relaxed counterpart to our massively labor-intensive year-end lists, it allows our staff the opportunity to write about older records they discovered in the preceding year-- many of which meant as much to them as any record that qualified for our proper top 50. These records may not be easy to track down, but we assure you they're worth seeking out.

101 Strings: Astro-Sounds from Beyond the Year 2000 [Licorice
Soul; 1968; r: Scamp; 1996]
Man, the year 2000 is going to be so cool. Cities will be built on clouds, all
music will sound like outer space, and all of our time will be spent lounging
in egg-shaped chairs watching our tele-visors, because all of our tasks will be
delegated to super-obedient robots. 101 Strings sold about 101 gazillion
records in the 1960s by making nominally sophisticated music for clued-out
adults who didn't like classical music but wanted their party guests to think
they did. Most of those people probably hated this record,
if only for the fact that it tried to be interesting. That meant hiring a band
that could passably imitate the Ventures, pushing the strings mostly to the
background, and tossing in some "spacey" fuzz guitar. There might be
some good melodies here, but I can't hear them through all the phasing. There
is one absolutely great track, though: "A Disappointed Love with a Desensitized
Robot", which features a crazy mod beat (no phaser, even!), copious Leslie
cabinet on the organ, and a freakish, microtonal string arrangement. Seven
years after the future, I'm still waiting for my rocket ride to our utopian
moon colony, but if I wrap myself in tin foil, close my eyes and listen to this
album I can almost see it gleaming in the unfiltered light of the sun. Almost.
--Joe Tangari

The Afghan Whigs: "Summer's Kiss" [from Black Love;
Elektra; 1996]
For some reason, I spent a good portion of 2006 wanting to only listen to Greg
Dulli. Perhaps it was hormones, perhaps it was dissatisfaction with the
sexlessness of current indie rock, perhaps it was boredom with "nice
boys" in general. I'd never cared about the Afghan Whigs or the Twilight
Singers before, but some time this spring I found myself craving Dulli's
malicious, delicious rasp more than anything else in the world.

Despite the fact that Dulli is often best when he's at his darkest and most
hateable, I couldn't stop returning to "Summer's Kiss", which might
be the happiest song he's ever written. It's the closest thing to a power
ballad that the Afghan Whigs ever write, a climactic love song built on the
crash and triumph of the Who's "Baba O'Riley" and the clang of
Pavement's "Summer Babe". When Dulli sings, "Come lay down in
the cool grass with me, baby/ Let's watch that summer fade," it sounds
like he just wants to snuggle, nothing more. Which is weird coming from a guy
who once admitted to having a dick for a brain, but hey, snuggling means that
much more when it isn't all you ever do. -- Amy Phillips

Johnny Bristol: Hang On in There Baby [MGM; 1974]
I was inspired to pick this up when I saw the cover, featuring a distant,
out-of-focus bikini girl whose suit is perfectly color-coordinated to the turquoise necklace featured prominently on Bristol's bare chest.
Turns out Bristol actually had quite a career: He joined the Motown crew in the
mid-60s, co-writing several hits, but by 1974 he was back out on his own,
signed to MGM on a deal that him act as his own producer. This record travels the borderland between sweet soul and gritty funk, with
hard-stabbing horns and cooking, bongo-enhanced beats supporting his sharp
vocals. The first two tracks give you the two extremes: "Woman,
Woman" is chunky funk where every instrument serves the rhythm, while the
title track is all strings, harmonies, and sugar, a definite stepping stone on
the way to disco. And Bristol does both quite well, reaching an incredible high
on "You and I", a masterfully written invitation to a love affair
that I can't believe wasn't a huge hit. Soul was a singles-driven genre, but this is a
great soul album through and through, from the honey to the grit. --Joe Tangari

Donald Byrd: Ethiopian Knights [Blue Note; 1971]
Last year, Donald Byrd was a near-constant discovery for me, but this 1971 LP is my favorite
of his, funky as all hell and absolutely filthy. Byrd's trumpet leads an 11-piece band that includes some guys whose own output ranks among my
favorite jazz, including vibist Bobby Hutcherson, sax man Harold Land, organist
Joe Sample and bassist Wilton Felder (the latter two were members of the Jazz
Crusaders). Taking cues from electric Miles, the band kicks up a funky storm
centered on extended interplay and solos that spring from the minutest of
themes. Two of the three tracks top out past fifteen minutes. "The
Emperor" is tightly funky, with some amazing playing by Hutcherson, while
"the Little Rasti" is jazz en fuego, a gripping odyssey that begins
with unaccompanied drums and slides into a ferocious groove that the players
use as a springboard for a bruising improv session. Byrd was on the cusp of
something smoother and more refined, but come here to get it raw, raucous, and
unfiltered. --Joe Tangari

Rita Chao: "Crying in a Storm"
Rita Chao was Singapore's signature beat girl in the 60s, cutting dozens of
tough sides, mostly with the backing of the Quests, one of the island's best
rock bands. Her voice could slide into a relaxed lower register or jump
out of the speakers into your lap, and this is an example of the latter
approach-- judging by the muscular backing and biting wah-wah guitar, I'd guess
this was recorded around '67. The male backing vocals are powerful, harmonizing
on drawn-out repetitions of her chorus declaration of "I was born to be
yours." The guitar solo kicks some serious tail, and that Vox organ
weaving its way through the background is to die for. This is the type of find
that makes following the 60s beat explosion to every corner of the world
worthwhile. --Joe Tangari

The Dillards playing the Darling Boys: "Dooley" [from The
Andy Griffith Show and Back Porch Blue Grass, Elektra; 1963]
Starting in 1963, the North Carolina-based bluegrass band the Dillards
appeared on several episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, none more memorable
than "Mountain Wedding". Playing the sons of the mountain-bred Darling clan, the
group-- brothers Doug and Rodney Dillard with Mitch Jayne and Dean Webb--
weren't natural-born actors, so they wore deadpan faces like brilliant sight
gags. During their performance of their song "Dooley" (not a
traditional as the show suggests, but Rodney's composition), which showcases
their picking prowess and brotherly harmonizing, their blank faces give way to
expressions of creative joy, lending dignity to a family that could have been
played for easy laughs. Keep watching for their gorgeous, nearly a cappella
reading of the hymn "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms". --Stephen M.
Deusner

Edu Lobo: Missa Breve [EMI; 1973]
A tip from Matt Ingram of the Woebot blog, Lobo's relatively obscure, moody
post-bossa song cycle is on another planet from the psychedelic mania of
tropicalia or the earthen acoustic funk of other early 70s Brazilian LPs like Gil
e Jorge. There's something-- and I hesitate to say this, because Missa
Breve really sounds very little like him-- that weirdly reminds me of Frank
Sinatra. Maybe it's Lobo's exquisite phrasing, dusky voice, and poised
orchestrations, a vibe of mature reflection that comes over like a South American version of
forlorn world captured on the cover of In the Wee Small Hours, albeit an
In the Wee Small Hours built on stunning acoustic guitar turns that
spirals to a climax of eerie, multi-tracked, almost Reichian female vocal
loops. Allmusic tells me that Lobo spent the years before Missa Breve
writing for the cinema and it shows. It's one of the best "movies for the
mind" records I know, as well as one of the most beautiful. --Jess Harvell

Shirley Ellis: "The Clapping Song (Clap Pat Clap Slap)"
[From The Complete Congress Recordings; Congress; 1981]
Also known for the gimmicky soul-pop singles "The Name Game" and
"The Nitty Gritty", Shirley Ellis reached her indisputable peak with
this 1965 Hokey-Pokey-esque instructive dance number. The clapping and slapping
are all well and good, but the song's run-on schoolyard chant verse steals the
show: "Three six nine, the goose drank wine/ The monkey chewed tobacco on
the streetcar line/ The line broke, the monkey got choked/ And they all went to
heaven in a little row boat." Tom Waits copped both the last line of that
verse and its sing-songy vocal cadences for his haunting "Clap
Hands", populating Ellis's brightly colored world with dancing, grinning
skeletons. --Matt LeMay

Nick Garrie, The Nightmare of J.B. Stanislas [Cherry Red;
1969; r: Rev-Ola; 2005]
I don't remember what my favorite local record store clerk told me that
convinced me to pick this disc up a year ago, unheard, but it was probably some
very enticing comparisons that whet my curiosity. If anything the experience
reinforced the notion that if you find a record store you can trust, then trust
your record store, as it's hard to believe an album this good-- a mildly
psychedelic folk-pop masterpiece recorded with a 56-piece orchestra and
originally released only in France-- went mostly unheard for so long. Unlike
the somewhat likeminded Scott Walker, Garrie (née Garrie-Hamilton) still
performs, which brings the question-- why isn't this guy namedropped more
often? So if you haven't already, plop down a few dollars on the disc and help
spread the word. Then, if you have enough cash leftover, maybe try booking him
for a wedding or something. His website implies he's available. --Joshua Klein

Girlfrendo: Surprise! Surprise! It's Girlfrendo [Bambini; 1998; r:
March; 1999]
I couldn't put Love Is All's Nine Times That Same Song on my albums list
this year, because it placed as an import in 2005. The Swedish group's
predecessor's lone album is less gritty, and thus a lot more raw. Girlfrendo
don't art up the Jam-meets-Wham! twee-pop of "First Kiss Feelings vs.
Everyday Sensations" with Pharaoh Sanders skronk or lo-fi scraggly, they
just pit a crush's first blushes against romance's ongoing goodness-- in a
Kenickie-spirited lover's quarrel of the sexes. Slow, nylon-stringed "Lose
Your Face" has an adorable confession: "This new Verve record/ It
never even made me smile, or cry." It's about being hopelessly unhip, and
it's as pretty as a homecoming queen. With records like this, who needs to hang
out? What do you do when you "hang out"? --Marc Hogan

The Gizmos: Rock and Roll Don't Come From New York [Gulcher;
2004]
In a year when every band seemed to be making their "prog" record, I
happened upon late-70s Indiana punks the Gizmos and their anti-prog anthem
"Progressive Rock". Sure, "progressive rock" might not
quite rhyme with "really sucks don't it, don't it really suck," but
the anti-intellectualism of the Gizmos is expressed with surprising wit and
self-awareness. Songs like "Bible Belt Baby" are actually quite strong
melodically, bringing to mind a less confrontational and more ramshackle
Misfits. And hey, what could be funnier than a reggae song called "Reggae
Song" that goes "This is a reggae song/ It's called 'Reggae
Song'"? --Matt LeMay

Åke Hodell: 220 Volt Buddha [Alga Marghen; 1998]
Those wondering whence the Knife may have cribbed their crows' beaks
will want to check out Swedish musique concrète pioneer Åke Hodell: his
"The Djurgården Ferry Across the Styx" is overlaid with
"exhaust-blue" crows' caws-- not to mention ring-modulated ferry
blasts, anti-aircraft guns and reverb-heavy intonations that make the Knife's
northern gothic sound positively perky. Like some (Quaa)ludic union of Chris
Watson and Biosphere, this is field recording spun into dark ambient, long
before the latter genre had a name. Hodell, a former fighter pilot, was a
Swedish pioneer of concrete poetry, radio plays, and audio collage; these four
long tracks-- between 15 and 22 minutes each, dating from 1970-71-- were reissued
by Alga Marghen in 1998 and 2002. (Now out of print, they were briefly
available earlier this year on the now-defunct Classical Connection blog, though Ubu.com still streams "Djurgården
Ferry" here.)
Dank and windblown, each composition is a journey into the bleakest depths:
dogs bark, bowed cymbals spin in reverse, bells toll for Modernism's waking
death. --Philip Sherburne

Victor Jara: "El Derecho de Vivir en Paz" [from El
Derecho de Vivir en Paz Odean; 1971; r: Warner Bros. Argentina; 2003]
Victor Jara was a prominent member of Chile's Nueva Cancion movement in the 1950s
and 60s, and one of South America's greatest folk singers. He was also an
educator and political activist who supported the successful campaign of
socialist Salvador Allende. "El Derecho de Vivir en Paz" ("The
Right to Live in Peace") is a haunting, dramatic protest against the
Vietnam War. While I don't
agree with its praise for Ho Chi Minh, to whom he refers as "the poet,"
I can't deny the power of its indictment of an absurd war (roughly translated):
"Indochina is the place beyond the ocean/ Where they burst the flower with
genocide and napalm." Jara was one of thousands tortured and ultimately
purged in the days following Pinochet's CIA-backed toppling of the Allende
government-- most cruelly, the soldiers who killed him broke the fingers he
used to play guitar. Today, the soccer stadium in which he was murdered bears
his name, but the right to live in peace seems ever more elusive for us all.
--Joe Tangari

The June Brides: "In the Rain" [7"; Pink Label; 1984]
Criminally undermentioned outside twee-pop circles-- David Eggers aside-- the
June Brides formed for a college battle of the bands, recorded only one album
(plus an EP), and then were splitto. They may be slightly better known now for
the trumpet-led Herman's Hermits chirpiness of follow-up "Every
Conversation" thanks to compilations, but debut single "In the
Rain" actually makes the best case for reappraisal. Shambolic as Orange
Juice, moody as the Velvet Underground reverbed through Josef K, the song's
jittery guitars stake out a ragged, joyous frisson. Sounds like Phoenix still
have a lot of loosening up left to do. "Is this the real world?/ Is this
all I can hope for?" lead songwriter Phil Wilson begins. To think, these
guys apparently had to turn down C86 for fear of getting typecast. --Marc Hogan

Basil Kirchin: Abstractions of the Industrial North [Trunk
Records, 1966; r: 2005]
I'd never heard of Basil Kirchin when an intriguing obituary
following his death in 2005 made me think maybe that was a giant oversight on
my part, sending me scrambling to play catch-up. Alas, there's not much
available to catch-up with, but some of the former big band drummer turned
avant-garde composer's works are turning up, thanks to the folks at Trunk
Records.

Apparently there were only 500 pressings made of Abstractions of the
Industrial North, which is perhaps easy to understand given how relatively
uncategoriazable it was at the time. An imaginary soundtrack, Abstractions
of the Industrial North continues in the vein of what Kirchin deemed
"Worlds Within Worlds," evocative, beautiful, and generally magical
themes that maybe come closest to jazz but honestly sound a little too odd and
whimsical to bear out that description. And for the trainspotters, the second
half of this collection includes the neat "library" obscurity
"Paging Sullivan", starring twin session aces Big Jim Sullivan and a
pre-Zep Jimmy Page. --Joshua Klein

The Love Joys: Lovers Rock [Wackies; 1982]
Wackies, the American reggae label, has been enjoying a deserved reappraisal
over the last few years thanks to those shadowy fanboys at Basic Channel who
have been repping late-era dub and early-era dancehall as far back as the 1995
Wire interview that first brought the duo to wider attention. After the deadly
deep Dance Hall Style by Horace Andy, this British male harmony duo's
second LP is the label's greatest achievement. Unlike long and winding Wackies
dungeons like Keith Hudson's Playing It Cool, Love Joys tracks like
"Let Me Rock You Now" are featherweight reggae love songs and if you
think that's a diss, you probably also think that SWV is inferior to, I dunno,
Son of Bazerk. Lovers Rock floats along on gentle skanks, swaying
synthesizers (or really gloriously garish ones on opener "One Draw"),
and lapidary saxophone, with producer Lloyd "Bullwackie" Barnes
adding the lightest touch of wibble or wobble like butterflies fluttering on
your way to your girl's house. --Jess Harvell

Magnolia Shorty & Katey Red: "That's My Juvie (Live)" [MySpace;
2006]
The punkest song about fucking I've ever heard is a New Orleans bounce
track from 1996, which, recorded live, captures the true essence of bounce: the
urgent din of the party, literally. "My Juvie", a pyrotechnic pairing
of the first female signed to Cash Money Records and one of hip-hop's first out
gay/cross-dressing rappers, was proffered up by MySpace.com earlier this year;
it both substantiates the case for the internet as treasure trove, and
reaffirms the necessity of preserving pre-Katrina NOLA culture.

Magnolia Shorty is like flint on the mic, screaming her threat: "Dem
hoes betta not fuck wit my Juvie/ Cause he hot and he don't wanna lose
me." Her tone is that of a woman four seconds from busting on any fool who
even looks at her dude, and Katey Red spurs her on: "Yay, Shorty, Yay! Yay
Shorty Yay!" It doesn't matter that the beat sounds like a
third-generation tape coming out a boombox, or that Shorty's mic is turned too
up and pops from the sibilance. Actually, those things help. The party is
raucous and the lyrics are raw as hell: "I like the way that fuckin boy
abuse me/ He got a big dick and he know how to use it" ("abuse
me" as coarse, disquieting metaphor for fucking). After that she just
freestyles, pumping the crowd with the Nolia Clap and pre-dating UTP by eight
years. When she takes a mid-song break to ask who's repping and where
("Mag-nola! Mag-NOLIA!") the mic picks up the party chatter behind
her. Finally, Shorty's Cash Money labelmate Juvenile himself graces the mic
uncredited, sticking to simple bounce chants: "Where New Orleans at? Where
you rollin' at?" It's all beautiful chaos, alive and bright. I pray the
tradition won't fade away. --Julianne Shepherd

Amado Maita: Amado Maita [Som/Copacabana; 1972]
Amado Maita's 1972 self-titled album is a prismatic gem of jazz-inflected MPB
from an intensely fertile period for Brazilian music. His voice falls in a
range well below that of the most popular Brazilian tenors, and it gives his
music a different type of gravity from that of many of his peers. The horn
arrangements Maita shares the songs with are impressively rich and varied,
painting his reverb canvas with twisting, intertwining lines of countermelody
and texture, with the occasional trombone or sax solo as punctuation.
"Samba de Amigo" kicks off with a swift, almost funky pace, but it's
the trio of woozily swaying ballads in the middle that give the record its
heart. "Cemitério dos Vivos" (my Portuguese is limited, but I think
it means "Cemetery of the Living") is a humid walk at midnight that
scatters at its close into a wandering guitar solo and horn arrangements that
unravel like DNA in a test tube. To my knowledge, this is out of print even in
Brazil, one of thousands of records from that country that deserves a second
airing. Let's hope it gets one soon. --Joe Tangari

Phil Manzanera: 6pm and 50 Minutes Later [Hannibal;
2004 and 2005]
Most of the hype surrounding the Roxy Music reunion-in-progress has failed to
note that many of the main Roxy members have been collaborating regularly since
the art-rock titan's long hibernation began. Case in point: in 2004 guitarist
Phil Manzanera released the strong 6pm, his best solo album since 1975's
excellent Diamond Head. 6pm features as guests Roxy compatriots
Paul Thompson and Andy MacKay, as well as elusive x-factor Brian Eno--
essentially comprising the core of Roxy Music sans Bryan Ferry.

But Ferry's absence is more than made up for in the form of fellow guests
Chrissie Hynde, Robert Wyatt, Bill McCormack (a longtime pal and bandmate of
both Wyatt's and Manzanera's) and David Gilmour, all of whom (save Gilmour)
reappear on the disc's equally strong 2005 sequel 50 Minutes Later,
which includes among its highlights two Manzanera/Wyatt/Eno-led space jams
ported over from Wyatt's "Cuckooland" sessions. All of which would
just be so much album credit clutter if the songs were not so good, raising
Roxy expectations still another notch. --Joshua Klein

Bobby Montez: "African Fantasy" [From Jungle Fantasique;
1958; r: Ubiquity; 2001]
Bobby Montez's 1958 LP Jungle Fantastique is an excellent Latin jazz
excursion, but the opener is far and away the best thing on it. "African
Fantasy" is a light-speed mambo that begins with paired vibraphone and
piano playing the theme. The two instruments then switch off, taking the lead
on a series of tumbling, well-considered solos that are fiercely melodic,
twisting and reordering the theme in myriad permutations. The instrumentation
is simple: aside from the vibes and piano, all you get are drums, drums, and
drums as hand percussion pushes everything along. It's not a simple feat to
make something so kinetic feel so sultry, but the vibes give it a hot, dark
atmosphere and a veil of mystery. --Joe Tangari

Conlon Nancarow: "Player Piano Study No. 3a-e: Boogie Woogie
Suite" [from Studies for Player Piano, Wergo; 1999]
At its most dense, the music of Conlon Nancarrow sounds like a shopping spree
captured with a big lens and broadcasting in high-definition. Well, almost.
Imagine as many as 12 sprees happening on one high-definition screen, each shot
by a different camera and each moving of its own volition. Close, but not
quite. Imagine each pair of shoppers moving at a specific, constant rhythmic
ratio, and, each time one moves, he chooses an item that relates to his
rhythmic ratio and to the item that his counterpart selected. Head hurt?

Somewhat sequestered in Mexico City, Nancarrow, who died in 1997, composed
his polyrhythmic and polytonal works entirely for player piano, confident no
ensemble could actually play them. He was mostly right: His "Boogie Woogie
Suite" takes one of America's most popular forms and lets it dance with 14
legs, splays of notes interlocking and recombining like miracles. It's the kind
of music that's not easy to imagine. It's harder still to believe it's actually
happening. --Grayson Currin

Igra Staklenih Perli: Igra Staklenih Perli [Atlantide; 1979]
History has established that communism in Eastern Europe was a woefully
ineffective economic system. It was much more effective at repressing the
people and stunting artistic growth and development, which makes the
slow emergence of a lot of quality old music from behind the Iron Curtain
both surprising and rewarding. Yugoslavia went communist but under Tito managed
to avoid becoming a Soviet satellite, and that allowed for a rock scene that
was a bit freer and a bit more prolific than those of its neighbors. Igra
Staklenih Perli, who were based in Serbia, were less hard rock-oriented than
many of their counterparts, and their 1979 self-titled album avoids prog bloat
through its use of interesting textures, oscillating proto-New Wave synth
rhythms and guitar solos that seem more designed to melt your brain than show
off chops. "Putovanje u Plavo" opens its rhythmic onslaught with a
passage of dive-bombing slide guitar, but the piece-de-resistance is the
seven-minute "Pecurka," a song that mixes Middle Eastern organ
figures, astral guitar and acid-stained vocals en route to a climactic
freakout. Thrilling stuff. --Joe Tangari

Eliane Radigue: Adnos I-III [Table of the Elements; 2002]
No matter how much you know about minimalism or drones, you're going to have
some questions about Elian Radigue. First, there's the name, that of a French
woman born in 1932. Then there are the associations: She's been around American minimalism since the late 1960s, borrowing Morton Subotnick's
NYU synthesizer, premiering work at the invitation of Terry Riley, winning the
favor of Rhys Chatham. Still, her music has been largely ignored.

While it's true that most haven't heard Radigue's story, things will change
with time, especially given the depth of her work: She initially started
composing due to an obsession with slowed sound, but Radigue's three
"Adnos" pieces, written between 1973 and 1980, play out like focused
beams of light that are slowly refracted, one ray gradually shifting over
multiple edges to reveal dozens of sub-units. Using one synthesizer, early
effects gear, and extensive editing, Radigue built phases of glowing light.
--Grayson Currin

Reynols: Blank Tapes [Trente Oiseaux; 2000]
Reynols was an avant-Argentinean ensemble led by Miguel Tomasín, a drummer with
Down Syndrome. His bandmates revered him and found inspiration in his ideas and
notions, such as his enormous collection of blank tapes. In 1999, Reynols
gathered the tapes Tomasín had collected over 21 years and played them back
through decks, amplifying their sound and processing the result.

Released a year later, Blank Tapes raises all sorts of post-Cage
questions about the very fundamentals of sound and music, but the creation
itself-- sheer sound, either pounding or subsiding-- leaves the questions be.
Thunderous passes slam without logic into halcyon washes, like Tim Hecker, but
simultaneously more simple and complex. This is the sound of pop ephemera
spewing its guts on the floor of a studio in Buenos Aires. Someone had to know
recorded silence that was re-recorded would be so divisive, cathartic and,
well, loud. No one expected it to be Miguel and Reynols, friends from
Argentina. --Grayson Currin

Charanjit Singh: Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat [EMI India; 1983]
This is an electronic disco album from India that came out in 1983 that my friend
Ryan Junell passed on to me. Though the "what the hell is THIS?"
factor is high, it's not a campy novelty record, nor does it resemble the
full-dress kitsch Bollywood classic Disco Dancer (Bombay's must-see
response to Saturday Night Fever). It turns out that a nonstop
Roland drum machine pulse and sleek Moroder-esque arpeggios make a killer bed
upon which to play classical ragas on analogue synthesizers. On "Raga
Meghmalhar", a monsoon raga drizzled with crispy white noise storm sound effects,
the endlessly spiraling melodic patterns of synthetic santoors and veenas click
so seamlessly with the Munich-style bassline chugging and lockstep kick drum
that Singh's antique futurism feels completely inevitable. PS: Reissue labels
take note, this thing is ready to take a cosmic disco dancefloor to a higher
plane. --Drew Daniel

Jo Tongo: "Piani" [Decca; 1976]
Some funk stomps, some funk slams, some jerks: this is funk that slides,
jumping into a wah'd-out disco groove after a quick woodwind fanfare (Is it an
oboe?! It's either that or a very nasal soprano sax.). Tongo was from Douala,
Cameroon, but living in Paris (and sporting a massive pair of sunglasses) when
he cut this in December 1975. I love the horn part here-- it's entirely
composed of saxophones, so it has this slinky sound without the piercing tone
of a trumpet on top. Tongo leads a call and response with some honey-toned
female backing vocalists and cuts loose with a fluid, clean-toned guitar solo
halfway through, and if I gather correctly, also played the rubbery, chunked-up
bass line. Tongo has a website and seems to still be active (he had an album
out a few years ago called Apocalypse Non)-- personally, I'd love to see
the self-titled record this originally came out on reissued. It's a gem that's
gone unpolished for too long. --Joe Tangari

Various Artists: Altin Mikrofon 1967-68 [DMC]
I don't know a whole lot about this compilation other than the fact that it
collects the top submissions from a Turkish music contest that translates to
"Golden Microphone." It's an early and excellent look at the
country's prolific rock scene at the dawn of the psychedelic era. A couple of
the biggest names in Turkish rock are here on early recordings, including
guitar hero Erkin Koray Dörtlüsü (sometimes
called the "Turkish Hendrix"), and the band Mohollar, who later cut a
series of pretty good progressive rock albums. The sound is all over the map,
from haunting, harmony-laden ballads like Yabancilar's "Agit", which
sounds like a cross between early Pink Floyd and Brazilian vocal group Os
Cariocas, to the frenetic, sax-led ethno-pop of T.P.A.O. Batman Orkestar
(Batman is a city in eastern Turkey), who have four tracks. Koray
already sounds like a guitar dynamo on "Cicek Dagi", which brings
surf guitar back to the home of the Aegean scales that inspired so much of it
in the first place. One of the cool things is that these bands apparently
weren't all from big cities-- it seems that the Turkish rock scene was spread
through the countryside, and it sounds absolutely in step with its
contemporaries in the UK. This transcends global psych novelty with a clutch of
excellent, entirely original songs and an overall sound that brings enough of
Turkey's musical heritage to the rock'n'roll table to make it distinct. --Joe
Tangari

The Zeros: Don't Push Me Around [Bomp!; 1992]
If there were an award to be given out for history's most unconvincing punk
rock band, it might go to these guys. Known to some as the "Mexican
Ramones," the Zeros tempered their punk rock posturing with an air of
well-meant excitement and naïveté. Singer Javier Escovedo delivers indelible
couplets like "I bet you think that you're really great/ Just 'cuz you're
older and you stay out late!" with all the hypersincere wounded bravado of
a snubbed younger sibling (perhaps no coincidence, considering that Escovedo's
older brother is the formidable Alejandro). This compilation of material
recorded in 1977 is an endlessly enjoyable reminder of why the word
"punk" is frequently followed by the word "kid." --Matt
LeMay